ROADS AND THE COMMUNITY.
Page 11
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What One• Penny Per Head Per Day might Do.
By Edward S. Shrapnel-Smith, C.B.E., M.Inst.T.
PEOPLE who are told of the simple fact seem to be astonished when they hear that all roads in Great Britain are costing the country a trifle less than id. per head per day over the whole population. That result' is none the less the actual one which remains, after .motor owners. and drivers have contributed their 117,000,000. The arithmetic of the matter is easy. One halfpenny a day per head is 15s. 2id. a yea!r of 365 days, and there are upwards of 41,000,000 men, women and children in England, Wales and Scotland. All the roads, inclusive of cleansing and scavenging, cost about £47,000,000 in 1924.
The moral, I suggest, is obvious. More should be spent by the road authorities, and more borne by the nation as a whole.
How splendid the additional service of our highways if we were able to double this id.—to make it Id. per day! Then, with the proceeds of direct motor taxation added, the heart of Sir Henry Ma.ybury would be gladdened to the tune of some £80,000,000 a year. And, without question, granted an extension of competent and wise road construction and administration, the community must see these pennies back many times.
The maximum effort of pre-railway critics of the highway situation, as voiced by Mr. Dixon Davies at the 1922 Congress of the Institute of Transport, envisages .a call for £65,000,000 a year to make things good and as they should be, road /notarially. It must, indeed, be a relief to all, whether they be really concerned or merely observers of events, to know that id. per head per day will "do the trick" on his far-thing scale.
Consider for one moment the not uncommon rates of daily, expenditure on beer, or tobacco, by individuals of one's acquaintance. A lonely penny does not go far each 24 hours with many of them. Yet, in respect of the id. for roads which is at Present the average, how many of them grumble! Where, is a sense of proportion, where a regard for the good roads that really matter?
May it not, be the caseI suspect it is—that ordinary men and women, who are unaffected by railway bias and have the present figure of id. a day for an roads properly submitted for their consideration, will be _amazed at the smallness of the cost at which they get so much?
How strenuously are these "minions a year on roads" flaunted in our faces by those who would make the ratepayer's flesh creep without the anodyne of analysis: I have essayed to supply it, and the remedy.
The present id. per head per day does a lot. Might it not be a sound investment to double it! Who at heart can really grudge either of these humble coins of the realm if regard be paid to value created and received?
There may be a case for equalization of contribution as between one rating area and another, but there can be no case for reducing this overall id. per day per head of the population. It is little enough, but at present' it represents all that is spent by general ratepayers and taxpayers of the country put together.
With id. available instead of id., worthy developments and improvements of our common roads might become the country's safeguard against railway monopoly and unemployed labour. The extra £31,000,000 a year so derived might be applied to serve big road loans, and thus render effective aid in distributing the population on the one-hand whilst greatly feeding it on the other.
I urge my numerous friends who are supporters of rite Commercial Motor to join with me in broadcasting the merits of this extra id. a day. It would benefit them. It would hasten the solution of the outstanding economic and social distress. It would hurt nobody—unless the protagonists of certain interests which are reactionary rather than progressive. My appeal is for id. to be increased to 1d., in order to make our roads still better and to help save our country.